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AND NONPROFITS
Consumer Healthcare
Products Association of the
District appointed Marina Karp
director of health policy.
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for America Memorial
Foundation of Arlington
appointed Phyllis Wilson
president.COMPANIES
Aperiomics of Sterling
appointed C. Alexander
Valencia chief clinical officer.
360 Live Media of the District
appointed Jack Macleod chief
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Quinn Evans Architects of the
BY PETER HOLLEYWhen you’re reading, looking at a
map or squinting toward the hori-
zon, your eyes adjust themselves in-
voluntarily and instantaneously,
thanks to tiny muscles inside the
crystalline lens that can bend it and
change its shape.
Like a camera coming into focus,
this structure allows us to adjust the
light entering the eyes as it travels to
the retina, where it is converted into
an electrical signal that’s transferred
to the brain.
Researchers at the University of
California at San Diego say there may
be a day when our glasses and con-
tact lenses can read and respond to
these eye movements, adjusting in
real time to the electrical signals cre-
ated by the muscles in the lens.
Inventions such as “adjustable
glasses” could follow, unleashing an
era of eyewear that would either or-
ganically adjust to someone’s eye
movements or allow wearers to con-
trol a lens by blinking, according to
Shengqiang Cai, 37, a professor of me-
chanical and aerospace engineering
at UC-San Diego whose team is ex-
ploring applications for soft robotics.
Imagine blinking twice to make a
lens zoom in or out; or looking left,
right, up or down and having a lens
that followed.
Cai and his team say they are well
on their way, having recently created
a soft robotic lens prototype that re-
sponds to the electric pulses — called
electrooculographic signals — that
are generated by the eyes when they
move.
Their findings are detailed in “A
Biomimetic Soft Lens Controlled by
Electrooculographic Signal,” which
was published in Advanced Func-
tional Materials.
“When you look at something
near or far away, your eye deforms its
lens using muscle,” Cai said. “Our soft
lens relies on a very similar mecha-
nism — a simple deformation. We
use a so-called artificial muscle,
which is a responsive polymer, and
we apply voltage and the material
expands or shrinks just like a real
muscle.
“Once the voltage is applied the
response is very fast — almost instan-
taneous,” he added.
Cai said his team’s goal was to
demonstrate a “human soft machine
interface,” that is, robots that aremade of soft materials and capable of
being connected to, or controlled by,
humans.
Although research in hard robot-
ics is much further along, there are
many benefits in creating machines
that are made of materials mimick-
ing living organisms, according to
robotics experts.
“Most traditional robotic systems
are hard, that is, composed of metal-
lic structures that require a comput-
er to function,” according to Science-
Daily, a website that aggregates news
related to science research. “Soft ro-
bots are created with materials that
don’t use a rigid skeleton or electrici-
ty to provide mechanical strength.
They are simpler to make and less
expensive than hard robots, more
capable of complex motions and saf-
er to use around humans.”
Because of their potential to
squeeze past debris, researchers say
soft robots could do search-and-res-
cue missions. The same abilities
could make them useful during sur-
geries.
This year, researchers at the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology
and Harvard University said they’re
developing a type of flexible body
armor for humans, one designed to
cover joints such as knees and el-
bows. The material — which is as
tough as the industrial rubber used
to make car tires and garden hoses —
was inspired by the durable, flexible
membrane covering a lobster’s joints
and abdomen.
Cai said recent news reports
seemed to suggest his team is close to
finalizing a commercial contact lens
that uses the technology, but he em-
phasized the two-year-old research
remains in its early stages. There
may come a day, he said, when simi-
lar technology that responds to sig-
nals generated by the body could be
used to control prosthetic devices or
soft robots that could alter their
shape by deforming themselves.
“Compared to a company like Bos-
ton Dynamics, this field is still in a
nascent stage and a lot of problems
still need to be addressed,” he said. “I
would be very happy to see more
creative ideas and applications that
allow people to benefit from the de-
velopment of soft robotics.”
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
businessCompany Insider Title Date Action Shares Price Now holds
2U John M. Larson Director Aug. 9 Bought 50,000 15.10 207,
Edward S. Macias Director Aug. 8 Bought 3,489 14.36 25,
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Trading as reported by companies’ directors, presidents, chief financial officers, general counsel, chief executives,
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Robotic lens catches, reacts
to eye movements accordingly
BY AARON GREGGThe Defense Department’s in-
spector general has assembled a
team of auditors to evaluate the
Pentagon’s handling of its largest
cloud computing project, a mas-
sive contract that could be worth
up to $10 billion over 10 years.
The review presents yet an-
other hurdle for the Joint Enter-
prise Defense Infrastructure
contract, known as JEDI, which
has been mired in controversy
and litigation for more than a
year. The matter was referred to
the inspector general by mem-
bers of Congress and through the
agency’s complaints hotline, said
Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman
for the inspector general.
“We are reviewing the DoD’s
handling of the JEDI cloud ac-
quisition, including the develop-
ment of requirements and the
request for proposal process,”
Allen said. “In addition, we are
investigating whether current or
former DoD officials committed
misconduct relating to the JEDI
acquisition, such as whether any
had any conflicts of interest
related to their involvement in
the acquisition process.”
In the statement, the inspector
general did not commit to even-
tually publicizing its findings.
Allen said the work of evaluating
the contract had already begun
and would be completed “as
expeditiously as possible.”
Dana Deasy, the Defense De-
partment chief information offi-
cer in charge of the procurement,
told reporters last week that his
office would consult with the
inspector general before award-
ing the contract. He did not say
whether the award would be
delayed until the inspector gen-
eral completes its review.
The JEDI contract is meant to
speed the military’s use of cloud
computing systems, which em-
ploy networks of remote servers
to improve computing processes
and ease the transmission of
data. Defense Department offi-
cials say they need to adopt such
technology to compete with Rus-
sia and China for military domi-
nance. They want to turn to a
single commercially oriented
tech company to operate that
system, and they have said only
Amazon and Microsoft meet the
minimum specifications.
The process has been dogged
by allegations that it is biased in
favor of Amazon Web Services
since it was unveiled last year.
Oracle and IBM have sued to
block the award, arguing that
turning to a single company for
such an important responsibility
is unwise and that the process is
rigged in favor of Amazon.
The inspector general’s an-
nouncement comes as a slow boil
of controversy surrounding the
procurement turns into a politi-
cal firestorm.
President Trump recently in-
structed new Defense Secretary
Mark T. Esper to reexamine the
contract over concerns that it
will go to Amazon, a move that
some observers characterized as
an inappropriate incursion into
the Pentagon’s business. (Ama-
zon founder and chief executive
Jeff Bezos owns The Washington
Post.)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),
whose political action committee
has received donations from Or-
acle co-founder Larry Ellison,
has asked that the contract be
delayed and lobbied the presi-
dent directly on the matter, a
member of his staff said. Demo-
cratic Sens. Mark R. Warner (Va.)
and Jack Reed (R.I.) raised con-
cerns that Trump may have acted
inappropriately by intervening
in the procurement.
In its most recent lawsuit,
Oracle accused Amazon of ben-
efiting from an “organizational
conflict of interest” by hiringaway Defense Department offi-
cials who had worked on JEDI.
Multiple investigations into
Oracle’s claims have concluded
that the allegations against Ama-
zon should not preclude it from
participating in the procurement
and that the Defense Depart-
ment was reasonable in how it
structured the contract.
Oracle’s latest legal action be-
fore the U.S. Court of Federal
Claims — a highly unusual
months-long court battle in
which lawyers representing
Amazon and the Defense Depart-
ment teamed up to fight Oracle’s
claims — failed to block the
award. Among other conclu-
sions, the judge presiding over
the case found Oracle was not
materially harmed by any pro-
curement irregularities because
it is not part of the competition.
Oracle’s lawsuit did, however,
manage to delay the award for
several months while the De-
fense Department reexamined
the role of Deap Ubhi, a Defense
Department official later hired
by Amazon.
Ubhi had worked for Amazon
before joining the Defense De-
partment, where he worked on
the JEDI procurement as a mem-
ber of the Defense Digital Serv-
ice. He repeatedly praised Ama-
zon and referred to himself as an
“Amazonian” while he was a
public official, suggesting he was
biased in favor of Amazon.
A Defense Department inves-
tigation concluded that Ubhi’s
involvement had not skewed the
procurement in Amazon’s favor.
The contracting officer oversee-
ing JEDI did conclude, however,
that Ubhi violated federal con-
flict-of-interest rules.
The judge presiding over the
case concluded Ubhi had lied to
both the Defense Department
and Amazon about the circum-
stances surrounding his depar-
ture from government service.The judge also concluded that
Ubhi’s claims that he had been
“leading the effort” to accelerate
the department’s commercial
cloud adoption were untrue, call-
ing Ubhi’s statements about his
role in the procurement “self-
promoting, fabulist and often
profanity-laced.”
Ubhi has not responded to
repeated requests for comment,
and his employer has declined to
make him available for an inter-
view. An Amazon spokesman did
not respond to a request for
comment last week on the De-
fense Department inspector gen-
eral’s review.
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
businessIG audit team to look at cloud contract
capital business
APPOINTMENTSTRANSACTIONS
ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESSPresident Trump attends a 2017 technology roundtable with Satya Nadella of Microsoft, center, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. In its pursuit of
a secure cloud computing system, the Defense Department has said that only Microsoft and Amazon meet the minimum specifications.
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